PAUL HURST

Pleased for him. Hope he does a good job there. The best manager I've seen at BP in my lifetime.

And what has Jolley achieved since?? Comparing Jolley to Hurst is like comparing Troy Deeney to Liam McKenna. (Yes that’s an o.t.t comparison but you know what I mean..)

A lot seem to enjoying knocking Hurst since he’s left. Each to their own and all that..don’t see the need myself. And anyone lasting 6 years or so under Fenty deserves respect.

It's really difficult to try and compare managers from our long history on a like-for-like basis. There are way too many variables, not to mention the varying state of the sport itself, and outside cultural factors.

We've had some really good managers down the years. Some brought success in the shape of promotions, others in the shape of survival or cup runs.

I think we can generally say that Buckley and Hurst have been two of our best managers in recent times.

I know it's not trendy to say, but I also thought our spell under Laws was very good. He was left a good squad and initially improved it. At the peak of Ivano-mania, teams couldn't live with us. I honestly thought we'd improved on what Buckley left.

However, it all unravelled and he's just another name in a list that ultimately didn't deliver and got sacked.

It's also a massively subjective topic, depending on when you grew up, what type of football you grew up watching, etc.

Hurst brought in some very good players — a top pro like Pearson, one of our best modern midfielders in Disley, some very good full backs like Danny Andrew and Carl Magnay who won POTY awards, plus a record-breaking goalkeeper in McKeown.

Let's not forget some of the strikers we had, like Hearn, Podge, Bogle, Hannah, etc. He also identified others who went on to have decent careers elsewhere (and come back to score against us).

On reflection, that FA Cup run apart, it did seem he went dry and ran out of ideas. But we very rarely rolled over for anyone under Hurst. True hammerings were few and far between.

I hope he does well at Shrewsbury if he goes, because he's a decent bloke and a good manager.

This thread prompted me to watch "All Town Aren't We".  It is actually much better than I had thought.  I imagined that only Grimsby fans would really watch it.  If it was split into episodes, it would be a great watch for any real football fan.  It has a nice balance between on field action, talking heads and clips from around the grounds. What a bunch of players we had then. Nice to watch Fox, McAtee, Scanz, Taylor, JMD and Mani to mention a few. And, Cropper's throw was immense.  It was good to listen to people from around the club and cameo's from Ryan and Rob at Wrexham.  How much would a film director have to pay for that in Hollywood? It brought it all back to me In other news there must be bad pollution here in HCMC because my eyes are watering. UTM!

You can split Town fans into two categories. Those who blame Hurst for getting us relegated in 20/21 and those who actually bothered to watch our matches that season.

Quoted from HertsGTFC

Lawrie I get, the other 2 clearly achieved success but as I’m only 57 other than reading the history books I can’t tell you how they achieved it, their style of football could have been pragmatic & boring and god forbid one of them might have cupped their ear after one of their several Wembley finals.

You could argue to your blue in the face in who’s sits behind Alan Buckley in our best all time managers.

There won't be many on here who do remember Allenby Chilton but to take a team from re-election to the Division 3 (North) championship in 12 months must give him a shout in the all-time great manager stakes.

Quoted from Son of Cod

You can split Town fans into two categories. Those who blame Hurst for getting us relegated in 20/21 and those who actually bothered to watch our matches that season.

We wouldn't have gone down under Ian Holloway, agree we were very poor but at no point did i think we would go down that season until Hurst arrived and we just went into freefall

The season after 21/22 we were equally shite but got lucky in the playoffs, because we got promoted people forget how dire we were from memory we finished sixth on 78ish points, fifteen points or so behind stockport who won the league.

So yeah i watched that season and the one after without the rose tinted glasses

Quoted from barralad

There won't be many on here who do remember Allenby Chilton but to take a team from re-election to the Division 3 (North) championship in 12 months must give him a shout in the all-time great manager stakes.

I seem to think he was player manager too, good shout.

Though plenty of organisations operated in that way in those days it's hard to believe you had to get elected or re-elected to be part of the Football League, I bet there was some real dark arts going on then with the clubs involved.

Quoted from Son of Cod

You can split Town fans into two categories. Those who blame Hurst for getting us relegated in 20/21 and those who actually bothered to watch our matches that season.

The ones who blame him for our relegation donbt understand momentum. we may have been above the relegation places when he arrived but we where dropping like a stone. It was a while before he  was able to bring players in who needed time to gel/get fit. By the end our form was actually good, but it was too late. if wed started the season with hursts squad i doubt wed have been relegated, the damage was already done

Quoted from Simon

We wouldn't have gone down under Ian Holloway, agree we were very poor but at no point did i think we would go down that season until Hurst arrived and we just went into freefall

The season after 21/22 we were equally shite but got lucky in the playoffs, because we got promoted people forget how dire we were from memory we finished sixth on 78ish points, fifteen points or so behind stockport who won the league.

So yeah i watched that season and the one after without the rose tinted glasses

I wish we were dire enough to get 78 points this season.